There was no answer to be made to this either. It only sank
down into my heart; and I knew I had no help in this world.
The question immediately pressed itself upon our attention,
where would we go? Dr. Sandford proposed Melbourne; and urged
that in the first place we should avail ourselves of the
hospitalities of his sister's house in that neighbourhood,
most generously tendered us, till he could be at leisure to
make arrangements at our old home. Just now he was under the
necessity of returning immediately to Washington, where he had
one or more hospitals in charge; indeed he left us that same
night of our landing; but before he went he earnestly pressed
his sister's invitation upon my mother, and promised that so
soon as the settlement of the country's difficulties should
set him free, he would devote himself to the care of us and
Melbourne till we were satisfactorily established.
"And I am in hopes it will not be very long now," he said
aside to me. "I think the country has got the right man at
last; and that is what we have been waiting for. Grant says he
will fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer; and I
think the end is coming."
Mamma would give no positive answer to the doctor's instances;
she thanked him and talked round the subject, and he was
obliged to go away without any contentment of her giving.
Alone with me, she spoke out: "I will take no Yankee civilities, Daisy. I will be under no
obligation to one of them. And I could not endure to be in the
house of one of them, if it were conferring instead of
receiving obligation."
"What will you do, then, mamma."
"I will wait. You do not suppose that the South can be
conquered, Daisy? The idea is absurd!"
"But, mamma? -"
"Well?"
"Why is it absurd?"
"Because they are not a people to give up. Don't you know
that? They would die first, every man and woman of them."
"But mamma, whatever the spirit of the people may be, numbers
and means have to tell upon the question at last."
"Numbers and means!" mamma repeated scornfully. "I tell you,
Daisy, the South cannot yield. And as they cannot yield, they
must sooner or later succeed. Success always comes at last to
those who cannot be conquered."
"What is to become of us in the mean time, mamma?"
"I don't see that it signifies much," she said, relapsing out
of the fire with which the former sentences had been
pronounced. "I would like to live to see the triumph come."
That was all I could get from mamma that evening. She lay down
on a sofa and buried her face in pillows. I sat in the
darkening room and mused. The windows were open; a soft warm
air blew the curtains gently in and out; from the street below
came the murmur of business and voices and clatter of feet and
sound of wheels; not with the earnestness of alarm or the
droop of depression, but ringing, sharp, clear, cheery. The
city did not feel badly. New York had not suffered in its
fortunes or prosperity. There was many a battlefield at the
South where the ravages of war had swept all traces and hopes
of good fortunes away; never one at the North where the corn
had been blasted, or the fruits of the earth untimely ravaged,
or the heart of the husbandman disappointed in his ground.
Mamma's conclusions seemed to me without premise. What of my
own fortunes? I thought the wind of the desert, had blown upon
them and they were dead. I remember, in the trembling of my
heart as I sat and listened and mused, and thoughts trooped in
and out of my head with little order or volition on my part,
one word was a sort of rallying point on which they gathered
and fell back from time to time, though they started out again
on fresh roamings - "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place
in all generations"! - I remember, - it seems to me now as if
it had been some time before I was born, - how the muslin
curtains floated in on the evening wind, and the hum and stir
of the street came up to my ear; the bustle and activity,
though it was evening; and how the distant battlefields of
Virginia looked in forlorn contrast in the far distance. Yet
this was really the desert and that the populous place; for
there, somewhere, my world was. I grew very desolate as I
thought, or mused, by the window. If it had not been for those
words of the refuge, my heart would have failed me utterly.
After a long while mamma roused up and we had tea brought.